U.S. OPEN '92: ON TENNIS; Agassi Has Earned Sport's Top Billing

More evidence that Andre Agassi has grown from a teen-age hairdo with an outfit that glows in the dark into someone who is capable of revealing much more than the middle of his stomach: He issued the strongest rebuke of Jimmy Connors, the 40-year-old sore loser who departed the United States Open last week with a graceless invective against a man who had beaten him for the 17th straight time.

Other players, like John McEnroe and Boris Becker, defended Ivan Lendl and his brainy game plan for Connors, but it was Agassi who seemed to take the lead when he suggested that 20,000 of Connors's "closest friends" in the Stadium and millions more in television land can continue to make a hero out of this guy, but enough is enough.

"I was a little disappointed at Jimmy's post-match synopsis of Lendl's play," said Agassi. "I thought Lendl handled himself with class."

Implicitly stated was that Connors had not. He certainly had not, and, at his age, he had no excuse other than to leave us with the sad realization that Connors hasn't changed all that much from when he was, say, Agassi's age.

People half Connors's age, in a sport that recruits in grammar schools, do not deserve to have definitive judgments of them passed. Not the way Agassi, struggling with the difficult mix of wealth, fame and talent, was character-assassinated the past few years, often portrayed as the personification of all that's wrong with sports instead of a silly kid under the hypnotic spell of the corporate buck.

In New York City, Dwight Gooden was given at least into his mid-20's to grow up and then was celebrated for presumably doing so. That's baseball, a team sport whose players don't have to live down the image of the spoiled brat raised at the country club. But even within tennis there exists a double standard. When Jennifer Capriati was signing million-dollar endorsement contracts at 14 before she'd played a single professional match, she was just a kid being exploited by a money-hungry dad.

Boys go off to war at 18, so, of course, they ought to be grown up by then. When Agassi was claiming in commercials that "Image Is Everything," the news media shouted him down as soulless and evil and likely to choke away every big match of his life. Then Agassi, predictably unpredictable, won Wimbledon in July, a couple of months after his 22d birthday, which, for the record, is exactly how old Connors was when he made his Grand Slam breakthrough in 1974.

This is not to anoint Agassi as a Nobel candidate, tennis's conscience, your child's role model or a choirboy who will never again curse out an umpire. It's just an I-told-you-so (a matter of public record) that pinning labels on adolescents is just dumb, as well as in bad taste.

Winning Wimbledon, the tournament he once said meant nothing to him, may have earned Agassi "the respect I feel now" -- from others and for himself -- but it was the passing of a few calendar years that helped him prepare at his own pace to cross the threshold.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

"I was 16, 17, 18 years old," he said. "Some of you who have kids that age know how many crazy things they say and feel. It's been a tough road and it's easy to second-guess, but you have to assess who you are now."

He once would tank a set if he felt it was time to get on with the next one, but the new Andre Agassi said he does not lie down for anyone, not even Nick Bollettieri.

Did Bollettieri, Agassi's coach, orchestrate his celebratory sprawl, face down on the Wimbledon grass, for dramatic effect? Indignantly, Agassi answered, "If people can believe that, they can believe anything."

About Agassi there will always be a swirl of controversy and disbelief, the way there always has been for Connors and McEnroe, which, in effect, makes Agassi their American heir as the player who transcends the sport -- which could be why Barbra Streisand, on television last night, calledhim a "Zen master." His thunderbolt game has always had flair. He at least dares to be different.

That was reinforced watching Jim Courier mechanically take apart the nearly departed McEnroe yesterday. Courier is the top-ranked player in the world, a hard-working, intelligent fellow who learned French so Parisians would know what he was saying during his championship speech there last June. But he is by nature a straight man, and his match is an event when the other guy is a McEnroe or an Agassi.

Agassi is next up for Courier in the quarterfinals after a 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 victory over Carlos Costa last night.

McEnroe and Connors can stop talking about the torch-passing, already. Agassi took it on the grass two months ago. Forget the rankings. Tennis is not a league with a season as much as it is seasonal entertainment. It's a touring show, and Agassi, right now, is its headline star.

We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports,
and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

A version of this article appears in print on September 8, 1992, on Page B00017 of the National edition with the headline: U.S. OPEN '92: ON TENNIS; Agassi Has Earned Sport's Top Billing. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe